Sat, Feb 08, 2014

A McKinsey and Co. survey cited by the Journal found that just 11 percent of private insurance signups were people who previously had no coverage. Other surveys found that about one-quarter of new sign-ups were previously uninsured.

Take a look at the graph below. From the end of World War II until 1964 the poverty rate in this country was cut in half. Further, 94% of the change in the poverty rate over this period can be explained by changes in per capita income alone.

Sochi, site of the Winter Olympic Games, has all the markings of being a total disaster. Like Ishtar, but with a bigger body count. Though the Games have not yet begun, reporters from around the globe are beginning to descend on the so-called resort town.

If Justin Beiber had returned from Cuba smitten with its healthcare and calling it “awesome!” most Americans would understand. But Iowa Senator and Obamacare champion Tom Harkin serves as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Quietly and under the federal and environmentalist radar, America’s oil industry improved and expanded its horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (aka, fracking) technologies – on state and private lands, where DC regulators and pressure groups had little sway.

At the end of the classic movie Ferris Bueller’s Day off, after the credits role and the music stops, actor Matthew Broderick shatters the fourth wall and tells the audience, “It’s over. Go home.” Hanna Rosin has essentially the same message for human males. It’s over. For you.

The economy needs to add about 360,000 jobs each month to push unemployment down to about 6 percent and provide employment for those frustrated adults. That would require GDP growth in the range of 4 to 5 percent.

It’s been a rough time of late -- questions are being raised about growth prospects, both for the global economy and the stock market. We’ve had more companies issue negative outlooks than we have had in some time, while the latest round of economic data has been weaker than expected.

As tax rates get closer and closer to the revenue-maximizing point, the economic damage becomes very significant. The key point to remember is that we want to be at the growth-maximizing point of the Laffer Curve, not the revenue-maximizing point.

Big Miss: Nonfarm Payrolls rose by 113,000. The Median Bloomberg estimate was +180,000. December was revised up a tiny bit from 74,000 to 75,000. Beneath the surface, things actually look better for a change. The household survey shows a gain of employment of 638,000.

Again we ask, “Who would in their right mind loans an 18 year old, who has likely never had a real job, has likely never paid rent, and has likely never paid for a car, $50,000?” No one of course, except the federal government.

The Sochi Winter Olympics will be the most expensive ever. There's no doubt it will go down as one of the greatest money grabs in history as Putin and his friends have pocketed billions. In the meantime the joint is a wreck- akin to a modern day Potemkin village. But it doesn't matter to the Russian strongman.

These talks might serve the government's political purposes, but they were not substantive. Nothing substantive happened because the Taliban sent no plenipotentiary representatives. They sent proxies who had no authority to make binding commitments.

Fri, Feb 07, 2014

One of the hats I wear is that of Washington correspondent for Dispatch International, a European weekly newspaper co-edited by Danish journalist and historian Lars Hedegaard. The name may ring a bell with U.S. readers because last February, a man dressed up as a postman with a fake package tried to assassinate Hedegaard, a noted critic of Islamization and proponent of free speech, at his home in Copenhagen.

My conversation with GOP Senate Senator Mitch McConnell on air Thursday made it obvious that he cannot plan or execute a Senate GOP strategy on the debt limit until the House GOP passes some sort of a debt limit bill and sends it over to the Senate, and even then no one can ever underestimate Harry Reid's twists and turns after it arrives.

What are you doing for Valentine's Day? Bleeding-heart progressives across the country are raising money for "an evening of music, song and sharing love for recently released People's Lawyer Lynne Stewart." Warm fuzzies for one of the world's most notorious terrorist helpers? I can't think of a more stomach-turning way to mark the holiday.

Gen. George McClellan commanded Union forces during the Civil War. He famously and constantly retreated across the map despite having larger forces than Gen. Robert E. Lee. At one point, meeting with his generals in the White House, Abraham Lincoln commented, "If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time."

The nastiest corners of popular culture in Hollywood and Manhattan usually love nothing better than denying their filthiness by hectoring orthodox Christians for the sex scandals lurking behind their "judgmental" ways. But the last few weeks have shown that the current aura around Pope Francis, and the false hope that he'll "go native" with the permissive crowd, is exploited in a different way.

The Obama administration's response to the Congressional Budget Office's prediction that Obamacare will cause 2.5 million fewer Americans to work in the coming years is an opportunity for Republicans to seize the moral high ground on the issue of work.

Hollywood is glamorous on the screen and in the imaginations of millions. But when reality intrudes on the art, the grime of human ordinariness, with all its needs, desires and compulsions, comes into sharp focus. The shine flees from the tinsel.

Like Hamlet pacing the stage in angst-ridden doubt, Speaker John Boehner this week delivered the message that immigration reform is dead for 2014. It's not that he doesn't realize the issue is important.

It's a succession of sensations Americans have come to know all too well in these sad cases: shock, then grief, then the details nobody really wants to know. A detail like the needle found in Philip Seymour Hoffman's arm when a couple of his discovered the actor's body over the weekend.

The fiery debate over Obamacare this week sparked new fears about the harm it will inflict on our economy, jobs and the rising costs of medical care. They were ignited by the Congressional Budget Office's troubling forecasts of the health insurance law's impact on all of us that raised many more questions than answers.

It's been a brutal start for stocks in 2014, but when anyone evaluates it, it has to be looked at in the context of the last 13 months and the last five years. The stock market isn't a board game like Monopoly where somehow everything begins anew and all stocks are on the "GO" square ready for a roll of the dice.

Young people are supposed to be in Obama’s back pocket and among his most enthusiastic supporters, but now the jury is out and the numbers show that many think Obamacare is one of his worst accomplishments as President or are indifferent to his signature legislation.

If you still harbor doubt that the correction in the equity markets now is underway, then all you have to do is check out a price chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Monday’s steep 300-plus point drop in the Dow sent the most widely watched measure of the equity market plunging below its long-term support at the 200-day moving average.

Gold is the simplest of financial assets - you either own it or you don't. Yet, at the same time, gold is also among the most private of assets. Once an individual locks his or her safe, that gold effectively disappears from the market at large.

A just-released report from the bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office is getting lots of attention because the bureaucrats are now admitting that Obamacare will impose much more damage to the economy than they previously predicted.

Your friendly neighborhood orthodontist has had enough… He’s suing the Obama administration for unilaterally changing the law. Republicans in congress seem scared to go after this administration, but one lonely doctor has decided that “enough is enough.”

So let me get this right. Team Obama taxes millionaires who create jobs, while Obamacare creates incentives not to work at those jobs. No wonder recovery is so anemic. The policy here is to create fewer jobs and induce people to work less at those jobs. If my logic is correct, this runs counter to the most basic principles of our economy and our country.

Two ads are seared into my memory from childhood. One is by Keep America Beautiful for Earth Day in 1970. The commercial portrayed what appeared to be an American Indian crying over the pollution that littered our country.

Despite recent sporadic rain, California is still in the worst extended drought in its brief recorded history. If more storms do not arrive, the old canard that California could withstand two droughts -- but never three -- will be tested for the first time in memory.

Americans love sports, as evidenced by the fact that the Super Bowl last Sunday was the most watched television event in history. While the game was a blowout and boring because of it, people didn’t tune in to see a tie, they watched to see one team beat the other, unambiguously.

Dylan Farrow, now 28 years old, is the adopted daughter of Oscar-winning director Woody Allen. In "An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow," published in The New York Times, Dylan accuses her father of inappropriately touching her "for as long as I could remember."

On my wife's side, I have a very large family in Fairbanks, Alaska. Culturally, Fairbanks is a lot further from New York City (where I grew up) or Washington, D.C. (where I live now), than the several thousand miles on the map might suggest.

In a world where Woody Allen can get a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes at the same time his adopted daughter accuses him of sexually abusing her when she was a child (Allen has repeatedly denied it), and where a film "The Wolf of Wall Street" sets a record for use of the F-word, it is a wonderment that an obscure, low-budget film called "Alone Yet Not Alone" has had its Best Original Song Oscar nomination withdrawn for allegedly violating ethical rules.

On January 28, nineteen U.S. Senators and 91 members of the House of Representatives, all Democrats, filed briefs with the U.S Supreme Court supporting the Obama administration’s legal war against Hobby Lobby, a family-owned chain of craft stores that provides health insurance for employees but refuses for religious reasons to cover morning after pills such as Plan B and Ella.

The best political snowball fight of the winter season broke out this week when the Congressional Budget Office (generally identified as the NONPARTISAN Congressional Budget Office) released numbers that infer Obamacare will cost jobs and, thus, slow economic growth.

In 2012, the Republican Party stood for the ancient biblical proposition that the sins of the father should be visited upon the son. Mitt Romney captured its presidential nomination while vowing to veto the Dream Act, which would allow immigrants brought here illegally as children to gain citizenship.

The latest report on the Keystone XL pipeline should be making environmentalists cheer… Instead they’re stepping up their efforts to get the pipeline blocked. John talks with Cindy Schild from the American Petroleum Institute about the radical “green” agenda – and its divorce from environmental concerns.

The president’s former worldwide rock star status is merely a distant memory as fingers continue to be pointed at America’s military aggression, from the Ukraine to Sudan. How the mighty have fallen as Obama’s domestic popularity numbers continue to rival those of the much hated George W. Bush.

I really wanted to write a truly terrific column for you, but I decided to take a nap instead, and by the time I woke up, there wasn't sufficient time to do anything but throw together a bunch of slapdash nonsense, like this apology.

I've argued for many years and written extensively about efforts that have made poverty so comfortable that it's hard to make the transition of taking care of one's own self. Government benefits are simply too good, and going into the workforce often means an actual reduction in income.

The most common definition of a statesman is a person regarded as a disinterested promoter of the public good. I personally like the definition of a statesman as a person who has a bedrock of principles, a moral compass, and a vision with the ability to build a consensus.

The Ba'athist government in Damascus appears to be holding its own. The best indication of increased stability is that the focus of most combat reports is the city of Aleppo, most of which has been under opposition control. The security situation generated two very strange comments by senior US officials.

Looking at labor markets, my biggest concern is the drop in labor force participation. The data from the Labor Department on the employment-population ratio, for instance, suggest a permanent reduction in the share of the population that is working.

In a new report, the Congressional Budget Office once again low-balls the impact of the Affordable Care Act on labor force participation and the economy. GDP, growth and employment for most workers will be harmed.

Wed, Feb 05, 2014

Secretary of State John Kerry must be really desperate to win the Nobel Peace Prize. So much so, he seems willing to continually force the state of Israel into untenable positions that put its security at risk.

Philadelphia's public school system has joined several other big-city school systems, such as those in Atlanta, Detroit and Washington, D.C., in widespread teacher-led cheating on standardized academic achievement tests.

As our liberal media continue to obsess over whether Gov. Chris Christie lied about knowing his aides were plotting to cause Bergen County traffic jams, it's worth remembering that our national networks don't care when Democrats lie -- even about their own life stories.

Years after Lisa Chamber told me about The Silent Scream, and after I converted on the life issue, I became the advisor to the pro- life club at UNC-Wilmington. On two occasions, we sponsored a campus showing of the Silent Scream.

As Lewis Carroll reminded us in 1872, “The time has come, the walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax – Of cabbages – and kings – And why the sea is boiling hot – And whether pigs have wings.”

In the darkest recesses of our minds we have always known that monsters exist. It is only when we are involuntarily thrust into an unfolding human tragedy that shocks our senses and devastates our hearts that we truly acknowledge their presence.

A favorite tactic of this Administration is to engage in outrageous behavior, and then – with the support of its allies – put its opponents on the defensive by accusing them of engaging in the conduct of which it is in fact guilty.

When CBS news anchor Scott Pelley conducted the 2013 Super Bowl Sunday interview with President Obama it was as obvious as it is today that the President, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Obama Administration officials had lied and continued to lie to try to hide the truth about Benghazi.

On Feb. 4th, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee's minority staff released a 19-page assessment entitled "The Federal Government's Track Record on Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure."

"Get right with the law" is the trendy new poll-tested slogan that's supposed to make both amnesty-resistant Americans and illegal aliens accept whatever so-called immigration reform Congress considers.

An environmentalist lies down alongside his fellow organic cucumber aficionados to block the construction of an oil pipeline and wakes up a member of a proxy army serving the billionaires who are fighting against America's economic and national security interests to line their own pockets. How did that happen?

When he was 26, Douglas Ray Dunkins Jr. received a mandatory sentence of life without parole for participating in a Fort Worth, Texas, crack cocaine operation. If that business had involved cocaine powder, the mandatory minimum would have been 20 years, and Dunkins would be free by now.

The CIA Chief of Station on the ground in Libya during the attack informed his superiors that the attack was "not/not an escalation of protest." Nonetheless, Morell sanitized and altered the talking points blaming the largely unseen video for sparking a protest demonstration gone bad for the death of four Americans.

A huge battle between pensioners and bondholders is on. Last week, a Bond rating agency blasted Governor Rick Snyder’s $350-million Detroit pension rescue plan as being too favorable to creditors at the expense of bondholders.

ISIL's goal has been to unite Iraq, Syria and Lebanon into a large emirate. To accomplish this, it has waged war against other groups in Syria that also are trying to topple the Asad government in order to dominate the fight.

The mindless concession of our rights to government over the years has put government in a position to dictate so many aspects of our lives. Consequently, this has mitigated the role and responsibility we should still have.

Last fall, the Supreme Court agreed to review two religious liberty cases surrounding the Obama Administration's contraception mandate. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties maintain that the federal requirement is an unlawful infringement upon religious liberty, and this year we'll find out if the highest court in the land concurs.

What do you do in Sochi? I just arrived here, it's late, I'm exhausted, but I'm going to find out. That is, after I sleep for about a day and a half.Before I got on the plane, I prepared for my Russian adventure. No, I didn't study a folder of clipped newspaper stories for some quickie background. I did real research. I rented some movies...

So, we have people with dropped coverage, part time work, facing higher premiums (which they are forced by law to purchase) in addition to 2.5 million more “free agents” being added to the unemployment rolls. Wow… Liberal economic theory is weird...

President Obama laid out his personal standard for approving the presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline in his global warming speech at Georgetown University on June 25, 2013. If the project increases global warming, he’ll veto it.

We’ve had more companies issue negative outlooks than we have had in some time, while the latest round of economic data has been weaker than expected. All of this has taken a toll on the major stock market indices, leaving the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 1,000 points from where it was just two weeks ago.

Guy Benson, from Townhall, joined the show to discuss the new CBO report on Obamacare… It turns out that Obama’s signature piece of legislation will be far worse for America than we originally anticipated. Also, John wants to know who’s having a worse year: Obama or Peyton Manning?

With U.S. and global stock markets continuing to slide this week, the long-awaited market correction may be upon us. With the Japanese market sliding 4% overnight, it now looks like the current pullback may have more to go.

Why do statists support higher tax rates? The most obvious answer is greed. In other words, leftists want more tax money since they personally benefit when there’s a larger burden of government spending. And the greed can take many forms.

I am convinced that real diplomacy can happen between groups which are fundamentally at odds. That’s really the point of diplomacy I suppose, and I think about the Biblical quote, “Blessed are the peacemakers” often when I am talking with people with wildly divergent worldviews from my own in DC and online.

Saul Alinsky, about whom the young Hillary Rodham wrote her Wellesley honor’s thesis, was neither communist nor conventional Big Government liberal. Hillary Rodham turned down a job offer from Alinsky. She turned aside from the path of anti-establishment populist.

Tue, Feb 04, 2014

One of our greatest achievements in the founding of our beloved America was the execution of our framers constructing two very essential aspects of the U.S. Constitution, that being both the concepts of federalism and the division of powers.

In the midst of the rising tide of hostility that pro-life activists are experiencing, it’s important to remember that some of the most vociferous abortion advocates of the past have become prominent pro-life champions.

Some supporters of President Obama may be worried about how he and the Democrats are going to fare politically, as the problems of ObamaCare continue to escalate, and it looks like the Republicans have a chance to win a majority in the Senate.

Football. Olympics. The mere terms reflect pride, passion and the American way. Football is one of the best pastimes in our country, and its crescendo reached its zenith this past Sunday with the Super Bowl.

I don't have a completely satisfactory answer when people ask me what we can do to combat the tyranny we are witnessing in this country, but one brave and principled Texas physician is showing how people can stand up.

At a time when Republicans have Democrats playing defense on Obamacare, jobs and the economy, the GOP is inexplicably ceding political ground to the Democrats on an issue that can only provide more votes for that party and possibly lead to a permanent Democratic majority.

The real "war on women" isn't happening in Washington; it is happening in Hollywood and New York or wherever men such as Woody Allen and Roman Polanski sit in a director's chair and are feted as great artists and hence great men.

While listening to the State of the Union (SOTU) address by the coolest president ever last week, I felt an odd chill go up my leg (because of the polar vortex) when I mused over why people loyally vote for and trust those who instinctively make things worse every time they try to fix something.

The ineptly named “myRA” is the president’s newest brainchild, designed as a retirement vehicle for the so-called disadvantaged folk. As I looked in the mirror, I was sure the president was addressing me since I’m not part of that upper 1%.

Most people need to have the mortgage paid off if they wish to have a comfortable retirement. That, of course, isn't the only way to have a satisfactory retirement but it goes a long way toward insuring a happy one.

Hillary Rodham chose the path of “central power” rather than the path of “personal dignity.” There is some evidence she is not fully at peace with that decision. Much depends, for her, her party, and America, on what she does next.

The truth is, mom and dad shouldn’t have co-signed for their child's student loans in the first place. There’s only one reason lenders want a co-signer, and that’s because they’re afraid the person taking out the loan won’t be able to pay back what’s owed.

Imagine you’re a statist and you want to raise your kids to have the same spiteful and envious mindset. What’s the best approach? Well, sending your children to a government schoolis an obvious first step.

Cold weather certainly did not help auto sales any, but didn't the economists know the weather was cold when they made their forecasts? I think the economy is slowing more than economists realize, even if weather is partially responsible for this.

I have a serious issue with the notion that the government shutdown was such a bad thing. Sure, there were parts that should have been avoided, but any entity with 800,000 non-essential workers should be pared down for its own survival...in this case our survival.

Mon, Feb 03, 2014

President Obama loves to talk about entrepreneurs. In fact, he’s mentioned entrepreneurs in every one of his six State of the Union addresses. The president lauds entrepreneurs as the foundation and the engine of the American economy.

When the House Ways & Means Subcommittee on Oversight grills the Internal Revenue Service’s John Koskinen next week about his scandal-plagued agency, it would do well to ask him to defend its proposed guidelines for the operation of “social welfare groups.”

Barack Obama used last week's State of the Union address to pontificate upon many things but it was what he neglected to do that spoke volumes about his capacity to address the great issues facing our nation.

When my wife and I were first married, we had some tough times, just like many married couples. Our budget was often in the deficit column before we even began the month! As much as we were in love, money, or the lack of it, tried to consume our relationship.

I didn't have a favorite in last night's Super Bowl, so I was neither crushed nor exhilarated by the thumping of the Denver Broncos by the Seattle Seahawks. And I want extra credit for watching the whole thing.

"I MUST SAY I am perplexed," John Kerry told grandees at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, "by claims … that somehow America is disengaging from the world — this myth that we are pulling back or giving up or standing down." The secretary of state, whose website keeps a running tally of the miles he has flown since taking the job (320,961 as of Friday), insisted that nothing could be further from the truth.

As the spring semester rolls around, college graduates will be thrust into the workforce. With their pedigree from a fine institution of higher learning, and economy ready to receive them, they will surely be able to find employment! The American Dream, a beautiful one at that. Too bad it really won’t apply to most graduates.

Good evening fellow Americans. My name isn't that important. I'm not running for office, but I am speaking to you this evening to deliver what I will call the Peoples' State of the Union. What do I want from you?

A White House Council on Women and Girls was formed in 2009 under the Obama administration to ensure that government agencies were taking into account the needs of women and girls. Warren Farrell, who has served on the board of NOW in New York City and writes books about men’s and women’s issues, was asked to be an adviser to the Council. He agreed, but suggested the need for a White House Council on Boys and Men. He was invited to submit a proposal to create one.

Simply stated, if Obama was concerned about low returns for savers, he should be directing his ire at the Federal Reserve, which has artificially pushed interest rates to very low levels as part of its easy-money policy.

If a considerable number of businesses might soon be seeing reduced earnings, with corresponding reductions in their expected dividend payments to their shareholders, it would make sense to focus more in the nearer term than a more distant future.

The Labor Bosses are not quite ready to jump to the GOP, but the universally dependable blind loyalty, open checkbooks, and armies of Democrat campaign workers may be a casualty of the bitter ObamaCare fallout.

That the media of old is dead comes as a surprise to no one. All pretense of objectivity is gone. When a media orgy breaks out over a progressive activist blogger with no journalistic background leaving the once-credible Washington Post to start a “news organization” that seeks resumes of like-minded progressives who “share our passion for fixing the news,” we can say without reservation that the media shark has been jumped.

President Obama had some typical applause lines the other night during his State of the Union address, but evidence abounds that there is less and less applause these days outside the Beltway for his performance and policies.

There’s been a real drop off in the quality of talent since Obama raised taxes on everybody. I guess the IRS scandal, the NSA scandal, and revelation of other associated good works by him haven't helped him either.

The other day, as the rest of the U.S. was experiencing record lows brought on by the Polar Vortex that Al Gore’s beclouded crystal ball didn’t see coming, I was soaking up the eighty-three degree rays in Miami at my gated-community’s swank pool. Boo-yah. That’s why we endure hurricanes folks, for the glorious winter weather.

If the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge were a football team, the coach would have been fired; the quarterback would have been dropped from the team; and the remaining athletes would have felt a pinch in their endorsement income.

The United States government and the Taliban don't agree on much, but they have found one point of convergence: Both think someone needs to get a hose and put out the flames engulfing Hamid Karzai's pants.

Following the President’s State of the Union address, expect ‘pro-worker voices' to ‘organically’ appear from every corner of the country with tear jerking anecdotes of laboring for decades at minimum wage.

The imperial city is run by a court. There are the Democrats and the Republicans the President and Congress, and don’t forget the Pentagon. Each tribe recognizes that so long as the state grows things get better for them.

The President unveiled his executive memorandum creating “MyRA” savings bonds; saying that “I could do more with Congress, but I'm not going to not do anything without Congress”. Good. Now we’re all confused. It’s nice that we have a leader who can unite us.

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